It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award"Review

Excellent. Truly excellent. "The Gangs Tries Desperately to Win an Award" cooked the entire way through. What an exceptional episode. All the more potent because it didn't even wind up having a huge "WTF!" gotcha moment (unless you count Frank + Burlesque dancer + bottle up his ass). It just remained hilarious, escalated, and then paid off in spades. Something that I didn't feel last week's episode did. I felt the build, but then it left me unsatisfied.

I have to admit though, the opening bit had me worried. This episode, as you could tell, was not about bars winning awards. It was about Always Sunny winning awards. And being overlooked by softer, fluffier, trite content that brainwashes you with its sweetness and predictability. So the message here was extremely thinly veiled. At the outset, it reminded me of last season's meta and polarizing "The Gang Recycles Their Trash," which called back old gags and stories as a way of telling us that Always Sunny will always be about the same basic thing - five idiots with dangerously bad ideas never learning from their mistakes.

But after the opening scene, and very funny transition from Dennis saying "This literally means nothing to me" to the title card, the funny took over and floored me with belly-laughs. Firstly, The Gang took a meeting with the head of the Restaurant and Bar Association, thinking that they needed to bribe him and kiss his ass to get nominated for "Best Bar." Of course, their version of kissing ass was treating him with contempt ("Some old boner gives me attitude, I'm gonna spit in his face") and resenting the entire process (as we learned that all mailers from the Association had been returned covered in "fecal matter, urine and racial slurs"). One exploding dye pack later, and it was clear that the guy wasn't "in tune" with their frequency.

"He'll get us." "He's not gonna get us."

From there, Charlie decided right a song for Paddy's (more on that later) and the rest of them headed over to Suds - a trendy, colorful bar with patrons who emit expertly-timed canned laughter and "awwww"s. On top of that, everyone had to drink on cue, waiting for a bell before they slurped down their giant, sugary tubs of alcohol. "I don't need a bell telling me when to drink," Dennis protested. Only to later admit that it seemed liked a lot of fun.

Naturally, Suds = Safe Network Sitcom, complete with a textbook "Will they?/Won't they?" storyline between the bartender and waitress. Meanwhile, Dennis and Mac admitted that Paddy's was just a "bunch of people yelling at each other." But not before they pointed out how weird it was that everyone wasn't constantly talking about the fact that the bartender had a black friend. Race was brought up again later in the episode when Z (the returning Chad Coleman) brought his black friends to Paddy's, causing Mac to fear it would become a black bar. Because "black bars don't win awards."

But that wasn't the only wonderfully telling line from this chapter.

"It's weird being around this long and never getting an award.""She doesn't need to be funny because she's cute.""I know we're cool, but the industry doesn't get us yet."

And then there was the Louie reference. Not a dig at the show, no, but Mac wondered if it was Paddy's location (as in FX) that was the problem and Dennis immediately brought up that it wasn't, because the new bar down the block had won a ton of awards.

Then there was Charlie's song. Charlie's amazing down-the-middle, surprisingly non-rapey "I Like Life at Paddy's Pub" song. So damn funny. A true "softening of the edges." Only to then return later on, after Charlie got high on spray paint, as a shrieking "Go F*** Yourself!" song to all the industry bigwigs. Followed by mass spitting. "Great song, Charlie," Frank applauded.

Not to be outdone though by Mac's awkward "we j*** in the drinks" attempt at being a friendly, mild-mannered bartender. Or his attempt to convey a "Will they?/Won't they?" charged moment with a blindingly soft-lit Dee - that quickly becomes a violent "I know they don't want to, and I don't want them to" moment. By showing us how Paddy's, no matter how hard The Gang tried, just didn't have it within its own DNA to be the type of bar that gets nominated for awards, Always Sunny revealed a singular truth about itself as a comedy.